Chapter Text
Okay, Agnes thinks, that isn’t going to work.
She wants to write it down- without something to tether them, her thoughts buzz through her head like gnats. She should get chalk or something. Or- Agnes looks around and-yes, that could work. She never liked this set of chairs. Thank goodness the Cult wasn’t sensible enough to give her stone furniture. Agnes grips a chair leg and lets a tongue of flame whip through it. It lights, of course, as easily as any other day in her life. This act is simple. This worship is right. She lets go quickly and the chair crumples into ash. Not the most clear or dignified way of getting her thoughts down, to draw on the walls like a toddler, but it works. So, things she knows:
1) She restarts at 18:37, 26th of November, 2006.
2) She has experienced18:37, 26th of November 2006 at least 3 times, this being the fourth.
3) As far as she knows, she will return to this moment no matter how or when she dies.
Hm. She squints at what she’s written, rubbing her temples. In a dirty, smudged scribbles on her wall, the charcoal reads 6 37 pm 3 die today. It just looks like she’s written an appointment, honestly. Maybe when this is all over, she could ask Jude or Sydney or someone for lessons- it would be nice to read something other than signs and menus with pictures.
Jude. Should she tell Jude about this? She’d surely want to know, being her guardian and all. But would it do any good, or just complicate it all? Jude puts her heart into these sorts of things, but she’s not sure how the Cult’s usual solutions would work in this situation. What would they even set fire to?
Plus, there’s the whole dying thing. Naturally, everyone’s first instinct would be to metaphorically (hopefully) swaddle her in bubble wrap, which she’s already established doesn’t work. Or- the tree? She scrawls this quickly even as she comes up with problems against it. Oxford’s... what, two hours away? Two and a half? She didn’t get the time before the pains started, but Jack was worried about the park closing, so the tree is damaged, however it is, around half eight. And today, no one in the Cult was further than Crookes, so none of them would have any real time advantage. They could get there, but not in time to do anything.
deaths
hung x2
reking ball x1
The hangings were suicide, obviously, so if she doesn’t inform the Cult of the tree on Hill Top, then no-one will try the ritual, and she’d never suggest it. But when she stayed in her flat, she was hit by a wrecking ball, of all things. That was a surprise, actually, and probably illegal. You’d think the tenants would be informed so as to avoid this exact situation. Well, she thinks, not this exact situation. Or at least Arthur would have taken care of it, he’s the one who deals with landlords and things.
Her head hurts. God, why is her life so weird? Other fifty-two-year olds didn’t have to worry about apocalypses, or the mercurial moods of a cult, or what is proving to be a not-so-fun sci-fi thought experiment. Probably. She doesn’t know many people her age. Do old people knit, now?
Yeah, ow. Her head feels bad. Proper bad, proper hurting, like pressure, like blood struggling to pump.
Like there’s something wrong.
Ah, she thinks, before she blacks out. Must be my old age getting to me.
“Oh, well, forgive me for trying to figure out why the hell I'm involved in this.” Agnes says to her reflection icily. The mirror, predictably, does not snark back, or turn into a giant spider or something, or answer in any helpful way, merely throwing up her hands with her. Agnes stomps off to have a bath (read: sulk).
“Why is this happening?” she groans to the ceiling, as the ice melts entirely. She better get out soon, or it’ll boil again. “I didn’t mean to be the Antichrist, if that’s what you’re punishing me for!”
Agnes hears a crackling sound, and an instant of electricity seizes through her muscles. She is dead before she even registers the pain.
“I wasn’t even doing anything!”
Agnes growls and yanks on the nearest pair of gloves- they don’t even match! she fumes- and turns on the tap. When the sink is full, she dunks her head in. It evaporates almost instantly, of course, with how mad she is, and she is left with a bathroom full of steam. She does feel a little calmer though . She has the odd urge to draw something on the mirror, but she might crack it, and she doesn’t want to be stabbed to death or something. Sighing, she opens the door- and feels a sudden blinding pain behind her eyes. She feels herself fall to the floor, twitching madly. The last coherent thought she has is, clear as day, Fuck me.
“Jesus fucking goddamn bitch son of a-”
Wow, her language has really gone down the toilet since she started dying. And her mood. She’s surprised smoke isn’t coming out of her ears. Could that happen? There are little hairs in your ears, right? I could burn those. Probably shouldn’t, though. I mean, I'm pretty sure my insides aren’t flammable, but setting a fire so close to the eardrum couldn’t be great for my hearing-
No, shut up. Focus.
Walking very carefully, she makes her way through the door and across the flat. Smoothing on a glove, she nudges the cord for the bathing freezer out of the outlet. It's probably still a massive risk, but she’ll be damned before the Web takes the one vaguely normal part of her day away from her, she doesn’t feel clean without it.
She settles in, ice hissing, shifting around in the growing pool of lukewarm water. She sees kids in movies licking an icy lamppost in winter and their tongues stick to it. What does that feel like? The victims of this always look alarmed, cartoonishly huge tongue going icy blue or raspberry red, but it’s played for laughs. She’s never seen anyone do it in real life, so maybe it’s not real, like love at first sight or rabies. Also, definitely unhygienic. What kind of bugs are on a lamppost, anyway? E Coli? The Plague? She wouldn’t do it even if she was normal.
She really wants to lick a lamppost now. Fuck.
Agnes likes winter. It’s the only time she feels cold. Snow shocks her every time she sees it, the fact that something so unlikely, so delicate can exist, can carpet all she sees. People don't notice if her breath steams like they do the rest of the year, so she can relax a bit. Also, she likes the holiday parts. All the lights and the shopping and the carollers. Nobody’s ever celebrated anything with her, but the Cult doesn’t do so much when it’s cold. Except for Bonfire Night. Lots of potential there.
She finishes with the soap and steps out, dying herself in a burst. Absently she checks the clock. 18:52. Agnes stops, and huffs a bewildered, pleased laugh. 18:52! Agnes nearly whoops with glee. Fifteen minutes! She jumps up in victory, slips on a small puddle of water and cracks her head against the side of the freezer.
Agnes decides to just sit in the bathtub she’s never used and wait. She doesn’t like looking at her face this much. She watches the clock and tries to daydream. Five minutes go by. Ten. Twenty. Agnes has almost dozed off when the pains start. It can ’t possibly hurt as much as I remember, she thinks, but it does. It hurts so much. Like she and the tree were the same being, splitting, groaning, static and solid and dying. And this too shall pass, she thinks, as she tries to breathe through wooden lungs. And this, too, shall pass away.
It does, as everything does, and she is left shaking in a scorched bathtub, like a child. Carefully, carefully, she extracts herself, smoothing down the side to curl on the floor. The ceramic is reassuring under her cheek, smooth and cool. The pain is almost numbing under her skin. It gives her space in her mind to think.
And what Agnes thinks is, basically: Fuck it.
Jack looks very sweet as he opens the door- all soft clothes and tousled hair. He tries to greet her mid-yawn. “A-Agnes? Hey. What are y’doing here?”
“We’re going out,” Agnes says, trying not to smile too much. Given Jack’s soft face as he leans against the doorframe, she isn’t doing much of a job of it. He shrugs.
“Alright. Got nowt else to do, I suppose. Let me get my coat.” As he shrugs it on, he asks, “Where’re we going?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Agnes says giddily. Jack pauses- Agnes takes the liberty of fixing his scarf- gloves on, of course.
“S'not like you, love.”
God, the material looks so soft. And flammable. She can smell- no. Agnes pulls the end through the last loop and backs off. “I know, right? But guess what?" Agnes leans in. "I’m going to die!" she whisper-shouts. Then she adds, so as not to worry him- "At some point! I should live a little!”
Jack still looks a little hesitant, but nods. “Can’t... argue with that. Yeah.” He turns and locks the door. “Yeah! I’m not getting any younger, am I? Got plenty of time to sit at home when I'm old!”
You don’t, her brain hisses at her, and Agnes brushes it away. “Exactly!” She waits until he puts the keys in his pocket to take his hand. She is less shy about it after a month, but it still thrills her a little. Jack turns to her as she turns to him, and they smile, and they blush, and they look away. Like teenagers.
As they tromp down the stairs- Agnes keeping one hand on the rail, that would be a stupid way to die- Jack asks, “So, what did you plan on doing in Sheffield at-” he checks his watch, “half past nine on a Thursday night?”
“Like I said, no clue.” Agnes hops off the last step, careful not to, I don’t know, break her ankle fatally or something. “I’m sure there’s plenty of trouble to find, though.”
Jack laughs. “I’ll drink to that! Oh, drinks, that’s a start. Shall we?”
Alcohol is a bad idea. She knows it, the Cult knows it, everyone who matters knows it. But Jack, holding out his arm mock-genteelly, does not. He is grinning like a rake at her.
“We shall,” she says sweetly, and takes it. Whatever. It's not like it matters it she blows a pub sky-high if the night starts all over again. And anyway, she could order something virgin.
They do a speed pub crawl, which Agnes didn’t even know was a thing. She explains away the staying sober as her and alcohol not mixing, which is true, and Jack seems to get it. “Addiction runs in my mate’s family,” he says understandingly. “I’ll get you something that isn’t shit, shall I? You ever had a mock-jito?” He does his best to get something for her at every stop- lime and soda, Shirley Temple, peanuts. She has to turn away whenever she wants to take a drink and concentrate on not burning the sugar, but it’s nice. Really nice.
At stop number four they run into some of Jack’s friends- birthday, apparently. “We’re going to a karaoke bar after this,” Warren tells them, as Agnes lets Jack take a sip of her sidecar (she hasn’t touched it for a half hour). “Karen’s mad on it. You want to come?”
“What’s karaoke?”
The karaoke place is close enough to walk to. It has a restaurant attached, but Karen also happened to be mad on beer-battered chips. The party decides to get nibbles.
“So, who’s going first?”
And so starts a night of drunken bellowing, stumbling and forgetting the words despite them being on the screen. It’s great. Karen, the birthday girl, is lovingly bullied into a duet- Don't Go Breaking My Heart. Agnes remembers when that was on the radio. A lot of Beyonce. Don’t Stop Me Now. Chasing Cars. Toxic, several times. Tainted Love. God Save the Queen, for some reason. Jack, after an hour, gets up and does a rather brilliant run of Hollaback Girl, complete with breakdancing. They get the lamp back together in just a minute, so it’s all good.
“I haven’t gone yet,” Agnes says, after that. Jack is offering her the menu, but she waves him away. “What song should I do first?”
“The Cha-Cha Slide!” Alice yells, but she’s had about seventeen beers, so she’s just going to disregard anything that comes out of her mouth. The scrolly thing is very interesting- she didn’t know there was this many songs in the world, and now she can just pick one? Just by tapping it? Technology these days.
“It would probably be easier without the gloves, love,” Warren says, but Agnes ignores him because- haha, there! Something she knows! She manages to click it, and the horns come through the speakers like an upbeat stampede. Bill Haley! Fuck, she loves this cover. She gets on stage.
Get outta that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!
Get outta that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!
“Well, roll me my breakfast,” she purrs in Jack’s general direction, “‘cause I'm a hungry man.”
I said shake, rattle and roll! I said shake, rattle and roll!
Well, you'll never do nothing, to save your doggone soul!
Agnes is probably over-egging it a bit, with the dancing and the winking, and her voice sounds very strange without the usual vocals, and she’s sure Jack’s friends think she’s a little odd with her less than modern choice but she doesn't care! Because they are clapping to the beat, and laughing, and a few join in on the chorus and it’s amazing. The world is spun sugar and laughter and Chinese food, and she has never felt more in love.
They stumble out after a few more hours, giggly and breathless. “-and well, let me tell you, I did not expect the Elvis,” Jack slurs, leaning on her. Alice supports him on his other side, chatting with Bree.
“Oh, you absolutely should’ve expected the Elvis. Rock-and-roll was all I listened to when I was a kid.”
“No- but- the splits, Agnes!”
“I’m flexible,” Agnes says smugly. “It’s not my fault if Dave wasn’t.”
Jack throws his head back and cackles, the long line of his neck rippling. I could just bite him, Agnes thinks mildly, leave a hickey like a teenager. What would he taste like?
Then she stops right in the middle of the road because what the fuck? When did that happen?
“Agnes? Come on, love!”
Oh, right. She’s with people. Agnes grins hugely. She’s with people! Out with friends! Jack laughs again, and the only thought in her mind is how pretty he looks under all these lights, the moon and the lamp and the headlights-
She is looking up at the stars now. There is a muffled, howling pain ripping through her bones like a forest fire, through her lungs (through her lungs and her neck and her head and she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe she is being snuffed-) but while the numbness in her mind lasts she smiles up at the night sky.
She remembers thinking that the night sky was an enormous blanket, and the stars were just holes for the sun to peek out. Diego sat down and explained it to her one day- about planets, about wormholes and aliens and solar systems.
“We used to think they were made of hydrogen,” Diego had said. “Set alight. I think that’s wrong now. Something called plasma. I’m not sure what that is.”
(She gets him to look it up. The distance from Earth to the sun is exactly one astronomical unit- 92,955,807 miles. Diego works out the maths. Light travels at 186000 miles per second. It would take 8 minutes and twenty seconds for the Sun’s light to reach Earth. It would take just under ten minutes for us to realise that the Sun doesn’t exist anymore.
Light is the fastest thing in the universe, but the universe is so much bigger than stars. When we look up at the sky, we are mourners at a graveyard. We don’t even realise it. We don't know we are watching the collapse of gods, until we never see that pinprick of light again.
Agnes doesn’t know how she feels about that.)
She blinks as her view is blocked. Black blobs float around her vision, leaning over her. She tries to bat them away, but her arms scream at her.
“-nes! Oh my god, oh my god, Agnes!”
The world and its noise swoop back in, and everything hurts. Jack is standing over her, panicking. Warren is barking out instructions no don’t move her her back might be broken call an ambulance call a fucking ambulance
“Jack,” Agnes gasps, trying to catch her breath now that her brain has caught up to her lungs. “Jack.”
How many times has she died now? At least five, right? The ones she had people around, she’d had her eyes closed. Stupid. It is much nicer to look at someone she loves. To look at Jack now, though his young, so very very young face is creased with tears. For me, she thinks. I did this.
“It’s going to be alright, Agnes, please just keep your eyes open for me love, please-”
Jack yelps as he touches her face. “Fuck me, you’re burning up,” he hisses. Agnes can smell meat cooking. He leans over her, hunching, hiding her, and a tear drops onto her cheek. She feels it bubble for a moment. “Stay calm, keep breathing, please Agnes, please keep breathing-”
Agnes tries. She wants to cry. She wants to break something, hurt something, boil the seas and burn this fucking earth to the ground. “I’m sorry,” she gurgles, through all the blood in her throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“-just stay with me, love, just breathe, please, please, please-”
Agnes Montague stares at her reflection as her radio plays the last bars of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major.
Agnes Montague screams.
“So,” Arthur says, rubbing his temples, “How many times have you died?”
“Eight, I think. Two hangings, a wrecking ball, electrocution, a couple medical things that might have been aneurysms, and a car crash.” Arthur is writing this down (lucky bastard) looking very tired. Sydney has their head in their hands. The rest of the Cult sits in silence, staring at her.
“It hasn’t been much fun,” Agnes adds helpfully, after a beat.
“Okay,” Arthur says. He is nodding, chewing his lip. “What the hell's going on?”
Agnes really wants to say something smart-alecky like oh it's all fine I've just been dying in increasingly painful ways for a laugh but she had grown past the yell-at-everyone stage when she was ten, and they barely treat her like an adult now. She takes a moment to cool. Arthur doesn’t deserve her shit. They’re all just throwing ideas in the air at this point.
“Spiral’s the obvious choice, right?” Roger says. “Time stuff, sense of reality being warped. Maybe some dickhead watched Groundhog Day and felt inspired.”
“But Agnes knows what’s happening,” Sydney says pensively. “It-Is-Lies is all about, like, losing control, losing your mind. And not being believed, right? If this was strictly Lies then we wouldn’t believe her. But we’re taking this fine. Cause- sorry, Agnes, but we’ve dealt with weirder shit than this.”
“Unless this is all a massive hallucination.” Silence. Sandy glares at everyone. “What? We’ve literally poisoned water supplies before, it’s a possibility!”
“I mean, I guess.” Roger sucks his teeth. “But these are really specific side effects. What kind of poison- or- or drug would do this?”
“Ask Lola,” everyone says immediately.
“But in every loop Agnes dies,” Sydney stresses. “It’s the End, it’s got to be.”
Agnes considers. The fear of dying, obviously. If she wasn’t afraid of it before she is now. But... not for the usual reasons. She’s afraid of the act, the how, instead of what comes after. It's possible, of course, but it's not the usual method. Uncharacteristically active. There's been a sick feeling growing in her gut as this goes on, that this won’t stop. That she’ll spend the rest of- not even her life, eternity trying to get out of this. Which would be-
“The Web,” Agnes mumbles. “It started with the tree. I’m trapped, maybe until I do what I'm supposed to, so- controlled? But why like this? How would anyone even do this without-” She grinds her teeth. “The power of the Spiral. But if it were the Spiral, why am I dying?” Uggghhhhhhh.
Before she can have another mental breakdown, the door slams, and Lola jogs in, panting. She is absolutely covered in glitter, for some reason. “Sorry, sorry! I was at a party in that fucking- skyscraper downtown-”
“Sheffield doesn’t have skyscrapers, you’re just short-”
“Don’t test me, Sydney, that thing has a fucking elevator. Look, whatever, I'm here now.” Lola straightens. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m dying,” Agnes growls, and does not elaborate. Lola looks blankly at her. Then her face softens.
“Agnes,” she sighs, gentle as talking to a lost puppy. “Are you going through another phase?”
So they fill her in on the main points, tree chopped, hangings, dying, blah, blah, blah. Lola gets glitter on her table and chair. Agnes doesn’t really mind.
“So, any theories?”
“I still think we should look at this without the lens of Smirke’s categorisation-” Everyone groans. Arthur starts saying “Diego, I swear to our Evil God, if you bring up Asag-”
“I might have something!” Lola says quickly, before they have another goddamn fight about this. “So, you know how I said I was at a party-”
“You’re literally marking your trail in glitter, Lola.” Jude scowls. “I'm going to have to sweep that up-”
“- because it was at this art guy’s house and it was an after-party for his- his show-and-tell or whatever-”
“Exhibition-”
“-and I saw some of his sculptures and shit, and they’re fucking weird and I just thought he’d been on psychedelics cause I'd been dealing a lot of those, but some of them-God, this one thing, it was like an optimal allusion or some shit, all twisted up- and some of the paintings were- okay, one of them was like, this house made of staircases and-”
“So you’re saying one of the sculptures could be causing this?”
Lola makes a so-so gesture. “I mean, I think it’s worth looking into. Also, I don’t know if this is relevant but on the bathroom door, there’s like, this crystal inset thing that looks like a wormhole. Or a vagina, I don’t know.” (Sydney and Roger high-five behind her.) “Lot of weirdos there. Lot of alternatives.”
“Okay. You, me and Sydney go to the party, check it out. Eugene, Sandy, you ask around see if there’s anyone suspicious come to town, maybe check with that antiques dealer. Diego, Rodger, you drive down to Hill Top. Jude, hold the fort here.”
Jude nods.
It is very quiet, after they leave; she and Jude have never been fans of small talk. They sit in silence for a bit.
“Have you eaten yet?”
She doesn’t mean food. Agnes has another fridge, but it isn’t opened more than once every two days, and usually by other people. Her life force is sustained by sacrifices, but her body seems to be human enough to want to be filled. She doesn’t like to do it often. She rather tires of the taste of ash.
Jude stretches. “Alright. Do you want to light a candle?”
She wishes human candles smelled better. Would it kill Eugene to maybe mix it up with citrus, or eucalyptus or something? Still, Agnes scolds herself, they do the job, and she feels full after, and she should be grateful. So when Jude sets one down, she lights it, and they breathe.
Jude is looking at her. Everyone knows she holds a candle for her (ha!) but it’s still surprising. Jude is very different from Jack. Almost the inverse. Short where he is tall. Pale where he is dark. Her eyes gleam, his mouth curves. But both beautiful. Indescribably so.
She does not love Jude. Jude loves her, probably.
She does not know if Jack loves her. Agnes loves him, probably.
“Do you like the skirt?” Jude asks. “It looks nice on you.”
“It looks nice on my legs, you mean,” Agnes says. Jude laughs and doesn’t answer. Agnes doesn’t pull it down.
They sit.
“Why’d you do it?”
“Hm?”
“You hung yourself. Twice. You knew how much it would hurt. And you did it twice.”
Hurt her? Or hurt Jude?
“Didn’t I explain? I thought it was right. I still think it was. I’m not... important, Jude. I'm just someone carrying the flame.”
“You’re important to me,” Jude says. Agnes looks at her.
“I thought you might enjoy it,” she says. “The life you build, we built, crumbling. It was a valuable oblation. Maybe it would be nullified as the Cult becomes powerful again, but I think it still counts. You can’t sacrifice anything more than a life, especially your own. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason, but I didn’t expect to you to be so broken up about it.”
“Broken up- of course I'd be upset about you dying, Agnes!” Jude is making a good show of having emotions. Not for the first time, Agnes wonders if there is something under the wax. If I press my finger to her head and push, would it just go out the other side? Or would it cook?
Maybe it would just cave in. Maybe she's hollow inside. If someone squeezed her neck hard enough, it would snap right off.
“Agnes, we love you, I love you! How can you say we don’t care?”
Agnes feels a flame lick up her throat. She turns to her follower, and very calmly, too calmly, says, “I don’t believe you.”
The sun is rising. Agnes’s eyes flicker over to the clock, ticking, as dependable and stupid as anything in this place. 07:48.
She hears heavy machinery outside.
"Oh," she says, "sh-"
She'd had to ask for directions up until about a mile away. That's how loud the music is. She's never been to a party before. It'll probably be a mixture of the bar and the karaoke, and possibly people kissing, and maybe it'll be like Saturday Night Fever with disco-dancing. Agnes firmly does not allow herself to think about the rest of the film.
The elevator door opens to a blank hallway. It is very clear which flat contains the party, as the door is wide open and spilling music, the smell of alcohol and pretty young couples. A refined-looking older woman (well, older than she looks. Agnes probably has ten years on her) winks at her from over her companion's shoulder, who is doing a very good impression of a Hollywood vampire. A young man smoking against the wall looks her up and down approvingly. Agnes flushes, almost walking into the doorframe. Oh, god. All these people are very pretty. She really wants a drink.
Apparently, parties in 2006 are not like Saturday Night Fever. There's a lot more confusing art, for one. At least seven people are openly doing cocaine, and- oh. Just going to look away from those guys. How is he even doing that?
Also, judging from the conversations she catches, the Cult would deem everyone here worthy of being set ablaze.
"-so when they say “working class”, they mean, people who can't afford a college education and end up greeting at Walmart cuz they didn’t learn to write code for computer software. They feel sidelined by the American Dream and resort to xenophobia and bigotry which the Right stokes with pundit bullying-"
"I don't want any more serious roles, Daphne," a guy says seriously, "I'm a comedy actor, I'm funny-"
"I mean, I think Ebenezer had a point, you know? Like, these guys aren't doing anything for the economy-"
She keeps an eye out for a blonde ponytail, or like, a vat of glitter big enough to fall into. It doesn't seem like the weirdest thing you could find in this place- she gets what Lola meant about the Spiral, because ow. This painting's just splodges! That statue doesn't make sense! What-
"Hey, girl, who're you? haven't seen you here before, you with Bobby?"
A few people are lounging on a three metre long sofa, all clearly high out of their minds. Agnes blinks down at the blue-haired woman who spoke to her. "Uh, no- I- I'm looking for someone? She's my, uh, guardian- short, blonde, maybe covered in glitter-"
The woman whistles as she exhales another cloud of greenish smoke. "Shit, kid, that sounds like our dealer. Lauren, right?"
"Lola, yeah! Where is she?"
"I think she's getting some supplies? Wait with us, she'll be back soon." She pats the cushion beside her. "Come on, sit!"
This is a bad idea, her logical brain insists. This is not what should be happening. But her eyes sting from smoke and her legs ache from walking, and she's just so done with this situation. So shyly, she takes a seat, people budging up amiably. The woman takes a long drag and stretches out like a cat. "Fuuuck, that's the stuff. You want some? It's all mixed up with cocaine, like the Israelis do it."
"Uh, maybe in a bit. What do you think of the... art?"
"Oh, man, I know what you mean. Like, sure Joseph, commercialism is crushing genuine emotion out of sculpture, turning it into some pseudo-historical status symbol, but by auctioning it off, aren't you contributing to that same commercialism? And also-"
Agnes listens politely for another few minutes, not understanding a word. "That's exactly how I feel. What about those pictures on the wall? They're... trippy?"
Blue-haired lady blinks hazily at the wall, where a staircase leads over to itself impossibly. "Hm? Oh, that's an Escher- just a print, though, obviously, Russo can't afford originals- all of us would like, kill for one. Great, right?"
Agnes glances again at the painting, and her stomach flips. "Uh, yeah. Who is Escher? Do you know where I could find them?"
A man who Agnes was seriously wondering if he was dead snorts. "You're not going to find him here, kid. Firstly, he's Dutch, and secondly, he's been dead since the seventies."
"Oh."
"You alright, kid? You're at a party, relax! Here-" he holds out a joint. Agnes peers at it, then shrugs. If all those anti-drug commercials were right and she'll die immediately after taking one (1) puff of Mary-jane, she'll know for next time. But right now, she thinks as she takes it, I've never been high before. Before she can light it, however, a waxy hand pulls her away roughly by her sleeve.
"Agnes, what are you doing here?"
Agnes grins up at Lola. "I was looking for- hey, cut that out!"
"Yeah, girl, chill, what-"
The man screams as Lola gives him a sharp smack to the cheek. Before she knows it, Agnes is dragged up from the couch and pulled through a quickly dividing sea of people. Lola is very scary when she wants to be, it seems.
"Lola, what the hell? I need-"
"You need to get out of here. This is not a good place for you, Agnes! Lot of weirdos, lot of- alternatives, just-"
Agnes splutters. "Lola, I can be here if I want, I'm fifty-two! And also, I don't even want to be here, I need to talk to you-"
"What could be so important that you aren't safe, Agnes? Look, let's just calm down and get out of here-"
"I AM CALM."
Clearly not, as she can see Lola's nose dripping off. She doesn't even have the decency to look mad at her for it, just sighs like she's waiting for a toddler to stop thrashing around. Agnes growls a breath through her nose. "Okay. We'll leave. But this is important, Lola, trust me."
"I'll trust you more outside."
"Fine."
Agnes stomps down the hall, trying hard not to steam. It won't do to have an outburst now and prove her right, especially in front of all these people. She catches the elevator doors just before Lola can make her way over.
"Agnes, just-"
"Lola for god's sake, I can take the lift for myself," she snaps, as the doors close.
No one seems very interested in her drama but a young man in the corner, eyeing her dubiously. You okay? he mouths with black lips. Agnes shrugs and turns away. His face niggles at her though. Does she know him? She can't, right? Where would she know a goth from?
She feels the elevator judder at the same time the music stops. As an alarm starts to whine and fill the room with flashing red, a calm automated voice announces, "We are experiencing a temporary power outage."
And then they start to fall.
Agnes feels numbness crawl into her bones as her fellow passengers scream around her. She did this. Of course you did. It'd what you were made for. A pretty tattooed woman sobs, chanting, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no-"
The goth jabs at the buttons desperately. "Can't break us out," he says, soft amidst the din. "I'm sorry, I can't."
"I'm calling 999!"
"Help!"
"Quickly, lie down, everyone!"
There's yelping as people scrabble for a place on the cigarette-littered floor. Agnes doesn’t bother, just squirms a little, trying to make sure her foot doesn't brush any bare skin. Everything that touches her dies. She’d prefer it if the last moments of these people weren't spend in agony, just a quick jolt.
The goth isn't lying down either. He doesn’t look very scared, or even surprised, just stares forward sadly.
“Excuse me?” Agnes asks, and gestures to the open door, the wall rushing past. She feels a hysterical laugh bubble in her chest. “Didn't you hear? You’re about to die.”
The goth smiles tightly with painted lips. “Don't worry. It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I die all the time.”
“Oh.” Agnes looks forward again. “Me too.”
They listen to the screaming for another second.
“Wait,” the goth says, turning to face her. “Wha-”